


Fate

by Amity333



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst and Feels, Book 1: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Canon Compliant, Canon Universe, Character Death Fix, Dark, Dark Lord Harry Potter, Deception, Do-Over, Drama, Emotional Baggage, Everyone Is Alive, Family, Fate, Fate & Destiny, Feels, First Meetings, First War with Voldemort, Fix-It, Gen, Good Tom Riddle, Good Voldemort (Harry Potter), Harry Is Tom Riddle, Harry Potter-centric, Horcruxes, Introspection, It's canon but not as you know it, M/M, Manipulation, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, Manipulative Harry Potter, Memory Magic, Memory Related, Minor Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, Misunderstandings, Moral Ambiguity, Moral Dilemmas, No character bashing, POV Albus Dumbledore, POV Harry Potter, POV Ron Weasley, POV Tom Riddle, Past Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley, Past Lives, Plot, Pre-Canon, Pre-Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Psychological Drama, Rebirth, Reincarnation, Riddle at Hogwarts Era, Rise of Voldemort, Ron Weasley-centric, Ron is Dumbledore, Sane Tom Riddle, Sane Voldemort (Harry Potter), Second War with Voldemort, Secret Identity, Secrets, Suspense, Tags May Change, Teenage Tom Riddle, Temporal Paradox, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It, Time Travelling Harry Potter, Time Turner (Harry Potter), Time travelling Ron Weasley, Tom Riddle's Diary, Tom Riddle-centric, What-If, Young Tom Riddle
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:47:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27206125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amity333/pseuds/Amity333
Summary: When the green light struck Harry straight in the chest, he hadn't expected to wake back up.In a dark, dank orphanage, nigh eighty years prior, Tom Riddle’s eyes shoot open.There’s something disturbingly familiar about the boy, Dumbledore thinks when they first meet. Not from his life as Albus, but asRon, that lightning scar. His heart skips a beat.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore & Tom Riddle, Albus Dumbledore & Voldemort, Harry Potter & Ron Weasley, Harry Potter & Tom Riddle, Harry Potter & Voldemort
Comments: 13
Kudos: 98
Collections: Temporal Twists





	Fate

**Author's Note:**

> This piece was originally intended as a one-shot, but I decided to split it into two installments to test its reception. Hope you enjoy!
> 
> As with most of my works, it is rated at a high 'T' for violence and some mature themes.

Harry had never been sure what came after death.

He’d tried to ask his aunt about it once. She’d pursed her lips, cheekbones protruding beneath her pale skin. There would hardly be anything, or any _one_ , waiting for freaks like him. Most certainly not his dead parents, and he shouldn’t ask questions.

Whatever Harry had expected, it hadn’t been this. Anguished screams, violent thrashes, and then a sudden, terrible stillness. The cold bit deep into his bones. He cried out, desperately, but nobody heard. And he shivered, certain now that he was alone.

He wriggled, struggling to open his eyes, but still the world remained dark.

—oOoOo—

Ron had never been sure what came after death.

He’d tried to ask his mum about it once. But how did one explain to a child why grandpa was gone? She’d smiled down at him, eyes shining, and promised him Septimus Weasley was in a better place.

Only twenty percent of Aurors lived to retire. He’d known the statistics when he signed up. Ron didn’t regret it, not a single bit. He’d rather die a hero, striving to keep others safe, than survive a coward.

The slashing hex hit him from behind, betraying not a glimpse of his assailant’s face. Ron tried to roll onto his side, but could only cry out from the searing pain. His torso collapsed on the ground, and his breaths finally began to shallow. He would never get back up.

He remembered his mum’s words as he laid on the ground, blood pooling beside him. How he’d cried that night, after learning what it meant to die. He’d finally get to meet his grandfather again.

For the last time, Ron closed his eyes. Perhaps death truly was the next great adventure.

—oOoOo—

 _“Freak!”_ the sour-faced boy shouted. He was far bigger, and taller, than Harry. “You did something to that rock! I saw you! You used some sort of voodoo magic to make it fly up and hit Adrian!”

Harry blinked. “I didn’t.” He wasn’t lying, either. He’d watched Ashton grab the stone himself, after Adrian had insulted the boy. And now he was trying to pin it all on Harry.

“You’ll be in so much trouble, Riddle! I met Mrs. Cole won’t let you eat for a week!”

He was probably right, too. For some reason unbeknownst to Harry, Mrs. Cole _hated_ him. Perhaps even more so than Harry had hated Riddle, in a life now long past. 

He’d been alarmed when he’d woken up behind gleaming white bars, unable to move. He’d been decidedly _more_ concerned when he’d realized he couldn’t so much as speak. His words manifested as incoherent babbles, preventing him from _Accio_ ing his wand. It was the only spell he’d ever learned to cast without it.

When the nurse had first addressed him as ‘Tom’, he’d set the plastic crib on fire. It had given everyone quite a fright. Poor Ms. Clayton had been holding on to it at the time, having come to soothe his cries. The staff had learned to leave him alone after that.

Each one of them had failed Harry miserably. After all, ‘Tom’ was only a child, even if Harry was far older. Neither in this life nor the previous had he been raised by people that cared. Yet despite it all, _Harry_ still did. He’d never become that monster, never make any Horcruxes, never laugh sadistically at the pain of another.

The world shifted, almost imperceptibly so, but Harry knew he had seen it. Soft grays seeped into the corners of his vision, dancing in the October winds. His ears buzzed, and a flurry of voices screamed. Ashton’s body was sprawled across the pavement, drifting in an endless sea of red.

Harry blinked up at the sky. The storm whistled and laughed, _too quietly_ , he thought, bathing him in an eerie silence. Someone grabbed his shoulder, and the world again swam. Then _white_ , the walls were far too white, and the air burned as it cried. He stared into Mrs. Cole’s condemning gaze. Angry and hard, like the cold stone floor, and the wide wooden desk she was seated behind.

Slowly, Harry’s vision steadied, as existence re-melded into being. He opened his mouth, then quickly closed it, for he knew not the words to say. Judging by the woman’s glare, he doubted there was anything he could.

 _“Tom,”_ she accused, and Harry clenched his fists. He could never convey how much he hated that name. He stared at her, refusing to look down, her eyes a sunken, _ashen_ grey. And Harry wondered if he wasn’t at fault, if _his_ magic hadn’t hurt the boy.

 _“Awful things happen to wizards who meddle with time.”_ Hermione’s voice was little more than a whisper, her tone just slightly off-key. Harry twitched, but he knew she wasn’t there. A memory, a warning – that this life was not _his_ , but only what had already been. And that gruesome fates would meet those around him, should he ever try to change it.

—oOoOo—

Dumbledore had been a great man.

Ron hadn't wept at his funeral. This was war, he knew, merciless and cruel. Good people had fallen, that had deserved better ends than callous green light cast by their once-friends. He’d waited to hole himself up in his room before he’d let the tears overtake him. How terrified he’d been, that the next broken corpse would be crowned by Weasley-red hair.

His sister – _little_ sister – once only sixteen, yet fourteen when she’d died at his hand. Ariana stared up at Ron, not in anger, but with a gaze hollow and empty and _gone._ His hands shook violently, and his wand clattered sharply as it landed beside her pale, prone form. Then silence, save for Aberforth’s sobs, piercing the stiff, heavy air.

No, Dumbledore hadn’t been a great man. He’d been a coward, that had let delusions of grandeur colour and distort the truth. But Gellert had been his friend, his trusted, his love – not Grindelwald, for the men weren’t the same. Ron remembered the first time they’d laid under the stars, the soft touch of the man's warm embrace. Gellert had told him about his younger brother, and how he’d thought the boy would have loved the Thestrals, had he ever lived to see them _. Muggles_ , he’d said, and it had been the first and last time Ron ever saw the wizard cry.

But Gellert was gone, and Ariana was too, and Ron wanted to fade into the rain. To this day, he didn’t know whose curse it was, that robbed his sister of her life. But he knew, bile rising in his throat, it’d been _his_ fault just the same.

Quiet tears streamed down Ron’s cheeks, and the storm raged on.

—oOoOo—

He couldn’t always recall his life as _Ron._ The memories came slowly, at first just as dreams, fantasies of what might have been. So he met _Gellert,_ not Grindelwald, and _Horace_ , not Slughorn, his colleague and his forsaken not-friend.

Sometimes he’d wake up with names on his tongue. _Fred_ , he’d whisper, he thought he’d seen _Fred’s_ lifeless body strewn across the ground. He’d see _Rose_ in the nightmares of his dead sister’s eyes, and _Hugo_ in Aberforth’s tired blue. Gellert had massacred a muggle village. It’d made the _Prophet_ , but Ron hadn’t read it, for he’d found that he already knew.

He never thought he’d become a professor. But he loved teaching the children, tried his best to protect them from the horrors of the war. And when he’d read through the roster one summer’s eve, _her_ name stood out from the rest. _Prewett, Arlene,_ was a kind, gentle girl, as his grandmother had always been. Her brother would graduate just the year next – too young, thought Ron, for another faceless victim of Grindelwald’s reign.

It took him two years to decide. Consequences be damned, Ron refused to just let his great-uncle die. So he apparated off to Claremont Crescent, dread pooling in his gut. The man had a family, distant cousins that Ron had of course never met. He’d _tried_ to warn them, but was hardly believed. How could a mere teacher know their small town would soon be attacked?

Perhaps Ron should have suspected, then, that he’d be the cause of their deaths. If he’d visited the city, he must’ve had allies hidden in its depths. Grindelwald struck within the month, and the streets had burned, burned, _burned._

 _Fiendfyre,_ screamed the papers, _in Northeast Yorkshire._ Their ends had been pre-determined.

—oOoOo—

He’d been wrong.

Harry watched as Ashton’s chest slowly rose, then fell, filling the boy’s lungs with air. He was alive – a full recovery, they’d said, mind his weeks in intensive care. Harry ducked out of the infirmary and back to the mess hall before anyone noticed his absence.

He’d been wrong, and he’d never felt more relieved. History couldn’t be changed. But it could be _twisted,_ to define the truth beneath a masquerade of lies. Like Buckbeak, thought Harry, who’d only seemed to die, until he and Hermione rewrote his fate.

Tom Riddle cared nothing for human life, but _Harry_ certainly did. And so long as he played the psychopath’s part, no one would ever know the difference.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, comments / kudos are always appreciated :-).


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